Cloud for Europe (C4E) addresses the objectives of the European Cloud Partnership program. It gives a clear view on the public sector requirements and usage scenarios for Cloud Computing in Europe. The main objectives of C4E are to remove the obstacles for Cloud adoption and to harmonize the requirements from different public organisations beyond national borders. Stakeholders from industry, purchasers, government users and citizens are involved in this process. This analysis phase will be followed by a pre-commercial procurement (PCP) for services that are identified as missing or need to be adopted for Governments use. To overcome legal issues, C4E will spend efforts to accomplish suitable contractual terms and conditions for future Cloud procurements.
The C4E consortium brings together a fine range of experts and demonstrates a sound balance between legal, procurement and technology experience. By performing market and requirements analysis on current technologies and legal issues, gaps will be identified and documented. Continuous dialog with stakeholders is essential from the beginning of the project. This will stimulate industry, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to participate in the PCP and to develop solutions needed by the public sector. Eight Consortium partners are indicating their conditional intent to invest in the PCP phase. How the costs, risks and benefits of the PCP phase will be distributed among all partners will be determined in negotiation with the European Commission and the partners. Each partner will do the investment in the PCP phase as stated in a contract between the partners that is to be established. Lessons learned and the developed Cloud services will be published for future re-use of the PCP instrument in other R&D projects. C4E will build trust in Cloud Computing by applying PCP as an instrument for industry innovation and simultaneously enhance cloud adoption in the public sector.